Patently ludicrous. Israeli helmer Eytan Fox may not be much of a filmmaker (at his best he touches the prosaic), but he’s found a viable film-fest niche in gay-themed closet-case macho military stories. This one latches onto a cool-as-a-cucumber Mossad assassin who returns from a successful mission in Turkey to find his wife has killed herself. Unwilling or unable to treat or acknowledge repressed psychological trauma, his boss sends him off to play tour guide to a couple of German siblings, grandkids of a suspected Nazi war criminal. If Mossad can find the old guy, they could take him out before he dies of natural causes. It’s a perfectly decent, if wheezy, set up for a thinking man’s thriller. But oh!, how it plays out! German sister is living on a kibbutz and learning folk dancing; German brother is there on a visit, trying to get her home for papa’s 70th b’day . . . when he’s not floating in the Dead Sea with his hunky, homophobic, covertly bi-curious(?) bogus tour guide, or hooking up with a gay Palestinian. Few of the scenes or relationships add up (better acting might have helped), and go completely off the rails when we head back to Germany. Then, a pandering epilogue to ‘straighten’ everything out. Oy veh iz mir!
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